San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball championship. less

San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball ... more

Photo: Phil Ginsburg

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San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball championship.
Photo credit: Phil Ginsburg less

San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball ... more

Image 3 of 5

San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball championship. less

San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball ... more

Photo: Phil Ginsburg

Image 4 of 5

San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball championship. less

San Francisco’s baseball team the Bay Sox, made up of girls ranging in age from 11 to 13, traveled to Orlando, Florida the week of May 25, 2015, to participate in the first national girls baseball ... more

Photo: Phil Ginsburg

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Baseball for women -- its time has come

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For all the progress made by women in athletics, there is one sport that has remained stubbornly noninclusive — baseball. It’is now commonplace to see women pole vault in track meets and even put on the gloves and compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but baseball remains a male bastion.

Instead, women are steered to softball or other sports. They are, the thinking goes, much too fragile to play hardball.

This week a team from San Francisco, the Bay Sox, traveled to Orlando, Fla., to help change the perception. The 12-girl team, ranging in age from 11 to 13, participated in the first national girls baseball championship.

The tournament is sponsored by a nonprofit called Baseball for All, which was founded by Justine Siegal, a long-time player and advocate for women’s baseball. Although there are some 1,200 women playing baseball (mostly against men) in high school and organized leagues, Siegal told a reporter they are rarely encouraged and often discouraged.

“I have 7-year-olds who think they need to quit. I have 7-year-olds who’ve been bullied to quit,” Siegal said. “And 10 to 13 is crucial age when girls quit.

The San Francisco Bay Sox are breaking barriers in hardball. Photo by Phil Ginsburg

The Bay Sox were among the 24 teams in the initial national tournament this week. Coached by Rachelle “Rocky” Henley, a member of the 1994 Colorado Silver Bullets, an all-female professional baseball team, they ran off a 4-0 record before losing 10-8 in the semi-finals to a team from Central Florida.

It isn’t hard to imagine this is the start of something bigger. Siegal called the tournament a “tipping point” for women’s baseball, and the addition of women’s baseball to the 2015 Pan American Games supports the idea.

As 13-year-old Leiyah Tate-Roger of the Bay Sox said on the team’s home page, she would “like to be judged by what she does on the field and not by the color of her nail polish.”